Nearly every day, the retired factory worker goes to the airline office, riding a series of buses across Beijing to hand-deliver a letter. And nearly every day, the letter says the same thing.
“Tell us the truth, and get our loved ones back to us.”
Once she hands over the letter, Dai Shuqin gets back on the bus and goes home, back to a small apartment where boxes hold copies of hundreds of letters she has delivered over the past two years, all begging for news on her sister and four other relatives who vanished when Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared on 8 March 2014. There were 239 people on board.
Most of the passengers on the plane, which was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, were Chinese. So across China, dozens of families are still wrestling with how – or if – to accept that their relatives are dead. Investigators believe the Boeing 777 crashed in a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean, killing everyone on board after flying far off course and running out of fuel. But they have only theories to explain exactly what happened, or why. Only one confirmed piece of plane wreckage has been found, a battered, rowboat-sized wing part that washed up on an Indian Ocean island about eight months ago.
What can you do when you don’t know what happened to people you loved?
Some of the grieving families have filed lawsuits, including 12 families who did so on Monday. Some have accepted cash settlements from Malaysia Airlines in exchange for agreeing not to file suit. Many are still debating what to do.
And some, like Dai, find their only solace comes in believing that their relatives are still alive. Somewhere. Somehow. As a result, their lives are now consumed by demanding answers from an airline that has few answers at all.
People say we are nuts. But for us, we have the feeling that our loved ones are still alive.Dai Shuqin
Dai, a 62-year-old woman, lost her younger sister who was on the flight, along with her sister’s husband, son, daughter-in-law and grandson.
Many relatives believe the real story of MH370 has been hidden from them. They disagree on what may have happened, debating theories and trading facts and rumors. But few believe they know the entire truth.
My family is still in the shadow of the MH370 accident. I can’t work like I did before because there are too many issues I need to handle in my family. But I do hope I can gradually walk out of the accident and go back to work. Need to decide whether to accept compensation and reach an agreement with Malaysian Airlines or file suit in court.Kelly Wen
Kelly Wen is a 31-year-old Beijing resident with a 5-year-old son who is now left without a father.
With the second anniversary approaching, Wen increasingly believes she needs to make up her mind about what to do.
She and some 80 other relatives of MH370 passengers went together to meet Malaysia Airlines staff in late February to get updates on the situation. From the start, it did not go well. Outside the airline office were nearly two dozen policemen in case there was trouble.
When they left, few came out satisfied.
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